Duality of structure

Duality of structure is one of Anthony Giddens' coined phrases and main propositions in his explanation of structuration theory. The basis of the duality lies in the relationship the Agency has with the Structure. In the duality, the Agency has much more influence on its lived environment than past structuralist theory had granted. The key to Giddens' explanation is his focus on the knowledgeability of the agent and the fact that the agency cannot exist or be analyzed separately from its structure. They can only exist as a duality. The structural properties which he calls modalities help illustrate the dimensions of the duality.

The Structure has both rules and resources or constraints and enabling qualities. Language is often used to exemplify these modalities. The system of interaction includes in itself "rules" of the language such as syntax but also leaves room for interpretations or the creation of completely new words. The system of interaction is responsible for maintaining a certain standard of consistency in order for the language to make sense to both the speaker and the interpreter. At the same time, the completeness of the language can always be manipulated and changed through interaction by the agent.

This sociology-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: Sociological theories Critical theory Sociology stubs Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную? Cecilie Thomsen Transgressive (linguistics) Look at other dictionaries: Structure and agency — The debate surrounding the influence of structure and agency on human thought and behaviour is one of the central issues in sociology and other social sciences. In this context agency refers to the capacity of individual humans to act… …   Wikipedia Duality (projective geometry) — A striking feature of projective planes is the symmetry of the roles played by points and lines in the definitions and theorems, and (plane) duality is the formalization of this metamathematical concept. There are two approaches to the subject of …   Wikipedia Duality (mathematics) — In mathematics, a duality, generally speaking, translates concepts, theorems or mathematical structures into other concepts, theorems or structures, in a one to one fashion, often (but not always) by means of an involution operation: if the dual… …   Wikipedia Duality (song) — This article is about the Slipknot single. For other uses, see Duality (disambiguation). Duality Single by Slipknot from the album Vol. 3 …   Wikipedia duality — /dooh al i tee, dyooh /, n. 1. a dual state or quality. 2. Math. a symmetry within a mathematical system such that a theorem remains valid if certain objects, relations, or operations are interchanged, as the interchange of points and lines in a… …   Universalium Duality theory for distributive lattices — In mathematics, duality theory for distributive lattices provides three different (but closely related) representations of bounded distributive lattices via Priestley spaces, spectral spaces, and pairwise Stone spaces. This generalizes the well… …   Wikipedia Structure ondulatoire de la matière — Dualité onde particule Cet article fait partie de la série Mécanique quantique Postulats de la mécanique quantique Histoire d …   Wikipédia en Français Social structure — is a term frequently used in sociology and social theory yet rarely defined or clearly conceptualised (Abercrombie, et al., 2000; Jary Jary 1991). In a general sense, the term can refer to: * entities or groups in definite relation to each other …   Wikipedia Wave–particle duality — Quantum mechanics Uncertainty principle …   Wikipedia Pontryagin duality — In mathematics, in particular in harmonic analysis and the theory of topological groups, Pontryagin duality explains the general properties of the Fourier transform. It places in a unified context a number of observations about functions on the… …   Wikipedia 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”